My final final is finalized, and only a dozen or so miscellaneous tasks stand between me and my first trip to the orient. I'm flying to Shanghai in the morning, where I'll meet my housemate Dawn, who has been in China all month. After a few days we'll head to Hong Kong for a week. I'm very excited about Hong Kong, bastion of capitalism, often held up as proof that economic freedom brings prosperity.

I haven't had time to anticipate the trip much, being busy as usual. I'm paradoxically hoping to both relax and get away from it all, and make some progress on personal projects that have been neglected for work and school. With similar paradoxicality, I'm expecting both that it'll be interesting to get a more global perspective on the war, and that it'll be nice to get away from the continuous coverage.

For some reason I'm very productive on airplanes, and there are 13 1/2 hours each way. Electricity may be a problem, productivity for me requires occasional access to power, and United's website implied that only business class has outlets. Perhaps if the flight isn't full, I can sneak up there and plug in. I wonder if it would be practical to power a laptop with some small device that converted human muscle power into electricity? I think leg muscles are the most practical, so maybe a foot pedal that you kept pressing?

Anyway, not much content here, just wanted to let y'all know what's going on, and that my email access will be sporadic for awhile. Wish me happy travels and no killer pneumonia :).

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